Aelfheim – page 19

"The Aelfqueen herself, Gná. Actually, she's probably planning to ask my help in finding you, rather than having guessed you're here. If she had gotten a fix on my portal last night she would have been here sooner. That could have been amusing." Seidr smiled wickedly.
She looked up and said, to no one in particular, "Enter of your own free will."
At Seidr's consent a portal formed; an electric ring like before, only without as much arcing. Hans wondered briefly how he now knew it was a portal, and why the sight of it didn't send him running, screaming. Of course, it is hard to run away in panic with a lap full of beguiling dark elf.
≪I'm out of here. I don’t enjoy the company of bitches.≫
Bast hissed and scampered back into the cave. For all that it was only the third time he'd seen her, Gná seemed awfully familiar as she stepped out of the portal. Two others following her were brought up short, as if by a wall. They stood there, obviously distressed.
"Sorry, Gná, just you," said Seidr in a singsong voice.
Looking at Gná, Hans took in her fair skin, long black hair, and regal bearing. She wore something like a red silk kimono, but the embroidery was vine-like with elongated animal shapes. Celtic, Hans guessed.
Hans' next thought was about his bare shoulders. Unfortunately, any attempt at releasing Seidr to cover himself was met with her shifting weight so that he had to hang on, lest he dump her on the floor. The wiggling was causing an uncomfortable reaction, so he quickly gave up.
Gná inhaled to speak and seemed immediately overcome, placing a delicate hand over her nose.
"What is that smell?" she whimpered.
In a sweet voice Seidr replied, "Bacon." She picked a slice out of Hans' bowl and bit into it. "Want some?"
Gná turned her head away from the sight. "You know aelfkind don't eat meat. Oh, I might have known your hovel would reek of scorched flesh."
"Hovel?" Seidr sounded almost, but not quite, offended. "This cave was good enough for the Narn, the Goddesses of Fate themselves, and considerably neater since they abandoned it."
Hans guessed he was witness to a game long played.
Seidr wiggled as she turned her face to Hans. "You have no idea what kind of packrat Urd was. I still haven't finished sorting through it all to make sure nothing dangerous, like that damned ring, ends up in the wrong hands."
She wiggled more facing back to Gná. "And to think I was simply going to give you that last, missing shard of your mother's mirror."
"The last shard?" Gná seemed, sort of delighted, but clearly had other things on her mind. "Seidr Dear, we'll have to worry about piecing her mirror back together later. I've come to warn you that this man is . . ."
Gná looked down at Hans, clearly noticing his bare chest and shoulders for the first time.
". . . very dangerous. What are you doing?"
Hans felt it time for another intelligent comment, "I, er, well . . ."
Adding a husky touch to her voice, Seidr moved in for the kill. "We were about to have sex, again. Would you like to watch, or join in?"
Clearly only barely managing to hang onto her reserve, or perhaps sanity, Gná half snarled, "This man is the first hero I have managed to find in nearly five hundred years. Did you have to snatch him away and seduce him before he could so much as lift a finger in my defense?"